Audio cable break-in, analog vs. digital nonsense

A couple of recent examples of audio silliness show how two groups - audiophiles and popular "audio" columnists - seem to remain immune to any increased technical understanding of audio.

In my last post I noted how technical audio awareness increased among the general public as a result of audio issues surrounding a popular sports broadcast. Unfortunately at least two groups seem to remain immune to any increased technical understanding of audio - audiophiles and popular "audio" columnists - as shown by a couple of examples of recent audio silliness.

First, once again confirming the time-honored observation that "there's a sucker born every minute," is an audio cable break-in service. For only $25 per unit, this service will relieve you of the annoying and "difficult" hassle of breaking in your new audio interconnect and speaker cables.

As all true audiophiles know, brand new cables won't sound their best until they've had time to "settle in" - a process that can take weeks or months under normal listening use. (The reasons for this phenomenon remain somewhat "mysterious" of course, but suggested explanations range from "electron lineup" or "electrostatic charges" within the cable, to the "properties of the dielectric changing from the magnetic fields that are around the wire as the signal flows through it.")

Now no audiophile wants to buy fancy new audio or speaker cables and then have to wait weeks or months for them to sound their best! So the solution, according to standard audiophile best practices, is to manually speed this process up by putting the cable(s) in question through a formal break-in procedure.

This usually involves hooking the cables up to their associated equipment - or to an appropriate test set-up and load (not something I'd bet most audiophiles are familiar with) - and then sending a signal continuously through them at appropriate levels for at least 24 hours. The details of this procedure may vary according to the instructions provided by the cable manufacturer, and may also require the use of special test "burn-in" CDs.

For best results, of course, you can always use specialized equipment like an audiophile burn-in generator. Given all the time and effort involved, it only makes sense then to consider a service offered by cable break-in professionals!

The other bit of technical nonsense that caught my eye was yet another article from an "audio" columnist on a mainstream media site promoting an ever-so-false but persistent fallacy about the difference between analog and digital audio. Yes, you guessed it - it's the old "analog waveforms are continuous and thus have infinite resolution and digital doesn't" canard.

The column in question this time, on CNET, is titled "An analog/digital audio smackdown" and comes complete with a large graphic showing continuous and dotted waveforms representing analog and digital, respectively. The author clearly doesn't have a technical background, but neither has he apparently bothered to take the time to understand the basics of digital audio - as is obvious from the article's very first sentence: "Every sound you hear in real life that doesn't come out of a speaker is analog."

The author looks like he might be open to reason and I considered emailing him or leaving a comment, but it seems that a number of his sharper readers have already taken him to task on this point. Besides, he's probably busy packing up all his audio cables to send off to the cable break-in service.

This was a fun thread. But heck, a 1 meter cable is a transmission line: it's just a bit above audio, right? ;-) And skin effect: mmmm..., what length of line do you need for skin effect to matter at 20 kHz? Aw, you know, I remember the psychos in one magazine calling for 20 bit a/d conversion at 1 MHz, because it would be soooooo much better than 16 bit/44.1 kHz. It didn't matter that the converters didn't exist at the time, or you'd need a bank of 64 of them, or something like that.

I seem to have come across this rather late. It never ceases to amaze me that my boss, a degreed EE, falls hook, line, sinker, net, filleting knife and frying pan for the pablum peddled by the purveyors of high end audiofoolery.
The subject of cables in particular drives me up the wall and out across the ceiling - 1 meter of speaker cable is NOT a transmission line! Skin effect doesn't apply at audio frequencies! Gaaaaah! One of my favorite memories is seeing that brilliant, sawed-off little pug of a man Gordon Gow lecturing on the foolishness of high end speaker cables, with charts and graphs and plenty of math and theory, while standing on a large spool of Monster Cable.
I sometimes think I'm glad The Old Man passed on when he did; it would kill him to see what the industry he and Gow helped pioneer has become.

Rich, Mtriploi, Kdboyce, and Bob, I have enjoyed your postings, these are great source material for stand up comedy!. I could not help my self to a great hearty, loud laugh at the office! I had to reassure my peer engineers that I have not lost it! some one made some comments about calling security out of concern for my health!.
Mr. Mike Marrow my hats to you, for generating a compelling sales pitch and having found a knack to capture naïve and poorly informed costumers.
You are proof that there is money to be made from rich folks, and we should quit whining from envy and let you continue make profit from poor innocent misinformed souls.

Obviously, Mr. Boyce and I are in serious professional disagreement. Has he never heard of "spare the rod and spoil the hardware"? When your system is acting cranky, that's not the time to appease the monster. Instead, get a few hand tools, an old Simpson 260, and if the equipment is being particularly recalcitrant, turn on a soldering iron. Stare at the offending hardware, frown, and slowly shake your head "no". This tends to quell any harmonic distortion or psuedo-audiophile deviation right away.

All of this is interesting to read. But take it from an "audio expert". All you need to do to get your sound system to sound really good is to just ask it to do so. Tell it what you want! Be forceful, but gentle. You will be amazed at the results and it only costs a little concentration on your part. Throwing a few appreciative remarks at the thing now and then also helps align electrons and lowers resistance to the cause. Not having golden ears, nor putting measurement equipment near it, also helps.
I have a few other odd ideas but this is probably not the forum for 'em.

Funny thing is, the green market actually reduced the bit error rate... I know, I ran tests with and without. Given how bad the original error correction was, that could make a difference in sound quality.
I once bought a pair of speakers and they sounded "wrong". The owner of the speaker company told me it was the high end speaker wire that needed to be broken in. Even the maker of the wire thought he was crazy. A laptop, microphone, and some downloaded software told me quickly that the zobel filter was missing on the woofer.... which was an easy fix.
I can say I have heard differences, yes double blind between two different analog interconnects. However, given how poorly matched I/O between the CD player and the amp was, it was not surprising.

I have no problem believing that a cable needs to be broken-in. This is no different than equipment being broken-in. What is not being understood correctly is the electron itself. Electrons can be sorted by color; the color tells you how hard the shell is. The harder the shell, the harsher the sound (this can be proved by dropping glass marbles and paint balls on a glass table). Harder shells require longer break-in periods. You want to get all the electron shells to the same "softness" level. Red electrons take the longest to soften, followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and lastly violet. The astute reader will recognize that this does in fact follow the colors that make up white light; light in fact being comprised of electrons in disguise. Once all of the electrons take on the same softness level you can expect "creamy lows, mellifluous mids and sparkling highs". It should be noted that there is a direct correlation between how long it takes to break-in cables and how much the sound reproduction components cost. If you spent $20,000.00 for an amplifier expect a very long break-in time; the longer you listen to it the better it will sound. This is because the electrons are softening. The process of break-in should not be "sped-up"; doing so may fracture the shell of the electron and all the creamy goodness may leak out (of course causing artifacts to be heard in the sound). A "gentle push" can be done however; the exact device to do this is beyond this writing, just know it requires a 1.5V carbon battery (not alkaline), a Tesla light-bulb, shards of blue-glass and some previously broken-in wires. I've designed a microscope that can see the electrons in question but am still waiting on some parts that haven't been invented yet. I would like to continue my explanation of electrons but the attendant is here with my meds...